Spider Kiss (12 page)
"You'll be the first Stag Preston fans in the country. Stag's going to be up there with the biggest of them, and you kids can help. How'd you like that?"
"We get regular letters from Paul Anka when we push
his
records," one sharp-eyed girl remarked.
Shelly grinned becomingly. "Honey, Stag is a
de
mon at writing letters. And he's got a bug for taking pictures all over the place. He'll not only send you letters, but some good pictures, too."
They purred.
"Bob Mandle will be plugging Stag from now on; he thinks he's great, kids, and we need your help, too. Now how about it?"
They didn't sing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," but they might as well have … they were Shelly's gang. He owned them. They were, in the parlance, in his pocket.
If you like carrying grenades with the pins pulled.
Within a month "I Don't Know You Anymore" had passed the million mark. Stag got his first gold record, and not at all oddly, the color reflected back from it by his eyes was also gold. Everything he touched with his vocal cords turned to gold. It was not unusual for a hard-pushed talent to get one big hit, perhaps follow it with a second, not quite as socko, but it was obvious this was not the case with Stag Preston. He was not a flash in anyone's pan. He was a solid property, a talent with something new, something essential, something special. His second record was done by Hollywood songwriter Sammy Fain, the title number from an "A" picture,
The Thundering Land
(with Burl Ives, Robert Mitchum, Sal Mineo, Shirley MacLaine and a cast of thousands — mostly nonentities). The flick grossed several million, and not a little of its success was due to Stag Preston. His rendition of "The Thundering Land" b/w "The Midas Touch" (a title Shelly considered apropos as all hell) netted him a second gold record. It passed a million and was last seen heading out of sight.
ABC-Paramount had come through with the best deal — or perhaps it was merely that Sid Feller had the sharpest eye for new talent; Shelly suspected that was why he had the cleanest contact lenses in town — and they were packaging him with four-color sleeves on his 45s, with Frank Wess backings and a promotional sweep unlike anything since Kim Novak had been shoved down an unsuspecting populace's throat.
The Brill Building was humming with word of Stag's drawing power. The sheet music operators and the sideline grifters all wanted their taste. The better mousetrap had been built, and Tin Pan Alley was beating a polished Italian loafer path to Colonel Jack Freeport's door.
Inside that door, Shelly Morgenstern, Colonel Jack Freeport, and Stag Preston held court.
The payola (now underground more than ever, discreetly delivered in white legal-size envelopes bought in Woolworth's) spread like a fine slick of oil on troubled waters; and like other troubled waters, they parted to permit Stag Preston's passage through to the Promised Land.
His first album,
Let Me Sing To You
, went onto the Top Ten in its third week and got rave reviews not only from
Cash Box, Variety
and
Billboard
, but Nat Hentoff and Ralph Gleason (the former of
Jazz Review
, the latter of the syndicated column "The Rhythm Section") both found ethnic roots of true blues singing in Stag's presentation, and lauded him openly, thus interesting the jazz audience.
The following month
Down Beat
and
Metronome
each ran an article of analytical discussion anent Stag Preston's emergence as a true jazz singer, his value as the first jazz-oriented pop singer since Mathis had gone bland, and how he was saying things in the jazz idiom. They decided he had "soul."
The fires were being stoked high.
Music Vendor
referred to Stag Preston as "the hottest thing since sliced bread."
Shelly caught the Colonel dry-washing his hands like a deranged miser on several occasions. It was Moneysville-On-Thames for one and all.
Stag had begun referring to Freeport as The Man.
Stag's up-tempo version of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" was pushed like a yak-cart going uphill on every DJ show, jukebox, tv dance program, high school prom or sock hop, every record shop in the country.
Let Me Sing To You
passed two million. Stag was now stacking his gold records, biting his golden fingernails and calling Shelly, "Hey, you."
"Let Me Call You Sweetheart" went into orbit at two million twelve, and Ed Sullivan called for Stag to appear on the "See America With Ed Sullivan" series, the show emanating from Manhattan. The Colonel, realizing the Big Time came no Bigger than this, made the deal and won Stag a close-out spot on the program. Trendex went out of its mind reporting that an estimated 23.4% of the viewing audience had switched channels to catch the second half of the Sullivan extravaganza, even if they had been elsewhere for the first half.
Arbitron, Pulse, Nielsen and Hooper clocked similar phenomena and Stag Preston's stock hiccuped into the blue chip strata. Freeport cackled and blushed and clapped his hands in childish glee as he hung up on one agent after another.
"Jackals startin' to suck around real good now, Shelly," he commented. Stag Preston was sewed up, and there was no room for a share-the-wealth policy.
Stag's tv appearances were carefully kept to a minimum. Overexposure was the last disease Freeport wanted Stag to catch. Leukemia, but not overexposure.
There is, however, exposure … and exposure.
In the night scene, abruptly, Stag Preston became a familiar sight. Whether it was dinner at The Four Seasons, The Forum of the Twelve Caesars, the Chateaubriand or The Colony … drinks at Sardi's (E and/or W), The Plaza, or The St. Moritz … champagne breakfasts at Rumpelmayers and about 1:00 PM a drink-breakfast at P.J. Clark's … The Blue Angel, Bon Soir, The Living Room … the Copa, the Latin Quarter, El Morocco, the Waldorf's Starlight Roof … the Jazz Gallery, Five Spot, the Showplace to catch Mingus and his group … Lindy's, the Stage Deli … wherever it was, wherever the hipsters congregated … Stag Preston's face was as much a fixture as the outstretched tip plate (with three quarters thereon) of the hat-check chick.
He found no difficulty in dating. It meant not only a juicy item in the columns to be seen with the scintillant young star, but personally Stag had that indefinable air that marked him unquestionably heterosexual, male, a real guy. There were no rumors — no matter how malicious the speaker — that Stag was anything but broad-happy. There were, however, a few murmurs that he might be, just a teeny bit,
too
broad-happy. Yet if such rumors were grounded in fact, it seemed to make no difference to the hordes of models, pseudo-models, career girls, pseudo-career girls, visiting starlets and call girls who made it their business to be seen in his company.
Now that the career-building had settled down somewhat, Shelly found he was able to relax.
The money was coming in nicely. He paid off the balance on the Mercedes, had it rebored and tuned, had the six assorted scrapes and scratches on its gleaming black hide repaired, and took it out on the Taconic for a run. He purposely opened it full-throat and allowed a growler to run him to the curb. He even paid the speeding ticket — with a grin that annoyed not only the prowl cop but the cherubic justice of the peace who charged him. For once, the money didn't matter.
Shelly Morgenstern had hitched his checkbook to a star named Stag Preston.
But like any star — as seen through a cloudy atmosphere — the twinkle was merely an erratic flickering.
At first the flickerings were faint, mere ghosts of what was to come. They were faint, but bothersome for all that. It began to get to Shelly the second night he had returned to staying with Carlene.
It was never hard to go back to Carlene. That was the trouble; it was like getting hooked on junk. The first one or three were easy-come-easy-go. Then a half dozen because it was chuckles. Then another one because it was wanted … who wanted? Oh, yeah, I wanted. And who am I?
The answer comes back as down a long, empty corridor —
You are the hooked man, man
.
That was how it was, going back to Carlene.
One of the trappings of seeming affluence, Shelly had "acquired" Carlene almost as though she had been the prize in the Cracker Jack box. After his first big touch with a television promotion outfit (a lofty term for a
sotto voce
organization who arranged plugs on-screen for payola), he had come into the sphere of influence of Colonel Jack Freeport and one day, almost as though ordered by the stock number, Carlene had appeared in his newly furnished apartment. She had stayed on, had moved in, had lived with Shelly without past or future — only with a non-demanding present.
There was no need for Carlene to demand.
Her existence was demand enough; her face and body were her dues, and she paid them regularly.
It was the ideal, yet the most unbearable, situation for a man of Sheldon Morgenstern's constitution. It was a loveless relationship predicated solely on Shelly's ability to keep her supplied with the delicacies of life, in exchange for which she was always bed-warm and ready, as well as discreet about her transgressions. She was cook, housekeeper, secretary and bed-partner. But that was all. Her similarity to Jeanie Friedel was the spur that drove Shelly's interest between the two women. Each was cold, each was incapable of a true depth of love — whatever
that
meant. Each was compelling by the very withholding of warmth.
And maybe
, Shelly had simplified it on several occasions, to himself,
I'm just a sucker for that type of broad
.
There was considerable merit in the concept.
But periodically Shelly would decide he wanted a more realistic, a less surrealistic, life. At those times he would not even consider sending Carlene away, but would move himself either to Freeport's suite in the Sheraton-Astor or would take a room in some 42nd Street fleabag.
But he always came back.
It had to be that way. She had come into his life unbidden, and by demanding only silently, bound him with his own desire.
I'm a prisoner of my crotch
, Shelly would unfailingly, unhappily muse, in the cab on the way back to the apartment and Carlene. He had thought just that, for the hundredth time, in the cab returning after Stag's career had gotten smoothly running. He had avoided going back — though the thinking could not be avoided — but it was months, and now like the hooked man he was, he was returning.
That night she bound him ever more tightly with loins and lips and liquid stillness. It may not have been the most perfect of all lives, but it was undeniably Shelly's and he was stuck with it.
When he opened the door, he knew another man (
men?
) had been there. Not too recently — there was always somebody, a bellboy, a doorman, a flak-man on his staff that Carlene had gotten to, who would tip her when he was getting ready to trek back — but someone had been there. The smell of Mixture 79 pipe tobacco was faint but detectable.
She was in the kitchen, her long, perfect legs encased in sheath slacks that fraction of an inch too tight to produce a desire to grab her by her cheeks and pull her up against him. They were white with black piping and they were topped by a silk blouse cut on full lines. Carlene was shy in the chest and though it really never occurred to anyone who was stopped by her almost Grecian-symmetrical beauty, and her height, it was a constant pique to her. Hence, the baggy blouse. Her black hair came down in a pageboy, a smooth, sloping fall that caught the kitchen light from overhead and toyed with it, much as she toyed with him. Her eyes were hidden, but Shelly saw them nonetheless. They were green. As green as something utterly unromantic. Choose one:
· an unset emerald, slightly flawed
· green slime on a condemned pond
· a snake's skin
· dollar bills old, wrinkled, being sent back to the mint to be burned
· the color on the base of old toy soldiers.
She looked up suddenly, as he stood in the kitchen doorway, and he was struck by the green of her eyes. They were none of the things he had considered them. They were green, very green, terribly commandingly green, extra deep, and faintly moist. (Was it from the onions a-peeling in the sink, or the mist of a woman secreted behind the iris?)
"Welcome home," he said.
"You look tired," she replied.
"What's been happening?" he said.
"Not a thing. Want a drink?" she replied.
"Not now, thanks anyhow. Any mail?" he said.
"Nothing but a few bills. I paid the current ones; you've got a letter from your tailor, whatshisname," she replied.
"Breidbart," he said, "Jack Breidbart."
"That's right. Him," she replied.
"Do not pass go; do not collect $200," he said, turning.
This time, she did not reply.
He ate dinner with her in silence, wrote out checks to cover the bills, considered
TV Guide
, and finally gave himself up to it.
They were in bed, straining, feinting, playing at mutual passions, when the phone rang.
"Damn!" he snorted, against her shoulder.
"So don't answer it," she said in the tone of a woman who is polishing her nails while talking to you, "let it ring."
It rang. It rang again. On the seventh, he hoisted off and snatched at it.
"
What the hell do you want at this hour, schmuck!
" he bellowed into the mouthpiece, and slammed it back onto the cradle. He fell onto his back as she rolled away from him, and for a long moment stared sightlessly at the ceiling somewhere above in the darkness. It was no good, no damned earthly good. But he had to have it; to the man who has nothing, nothing with substance is something.
The phone rang again.
This time he clapped it to his ear before the first ring had faded away.
He was about to use The Words when a woman's voice crashed against his anger. "Shelly! Shelly, for Chrissake help me!"
Jean Friedel.
